Tag: blog

Moblogging without going out

kissinger.jpg
Update: like practically every post of this vintage on my blog, the links here are broken and the post is, as a result, incomprehensible. And whatever the Memory Hole actually was, when I linked to it here, it’s now ‘a lifestyle blog to remember‘.

I’m blogging this for several reasons. First, since I can now (sort of) moblog from my camphone I’m trying out a visual blogging technique where I pointlessly apply the principles of moblogging to ordinary blogging and take pictures of web sites I have visited instead of just linking to them. Second, I very much like the idea of getting a cease and desist notice from Henry Kissinger and third, I admire the mission of The Memory Hole. Thanks to Danny for the link.

DIY Coffee Table Book

Which brings the number of links on the left of this page to a frightening twenty, if you take into account the two external ones. It is way too much. So, dear reader, as I stare at this design (which dates back to the beginning of the year 2001) and long for a change, I’ve decided to re-think the site architecture as well.

and another thing…

What’s happened to all my links? All my lovely links over there on the right have stopped working (likewise the stylesheet for that bit of the page?). Blogger seems to have thrown away every single URL from my laboriously-entered anchor tags. I think this is the last straw. Movable Type here I come. It can’t be an OSX.2 thing can it? Or a Mozilla 1.0 thing (I just switched over from Explorer. Everybody going on about tabbed browsing was driving me mad)?

A ragged-trousered elite

When a figure of authority (this is me, but not really me because in this I’m just standing in for The Guardian) reaches out to offer ‘validation’ to an emerging, potentially-disruptive new thing (weblogs), he should not be surprised when the pioneers of that new thing tell him to shove it. Having said that, the reason I offered – by proxy – the mainstream’s validation for blogging was precisely because I’m not a figure of authority. I’m actually a blogger – my connection to the mainstream media is the fact that The Guardian invited me to rate some weblogs.

Speaking as a blogger, I don’t think we need validation from the newspapers or the TV but I think it would be a good thing. So I’m getting stick from all sorts of people (even one person on a train) for grandly extending the hand of ‘validation’ to the grimy bloggers toiling beneath me. And having said all that, this defensive – not to say twitchy – reaction to the Guardian comp from the blogging hardcore really is exactly what happens when anything new is threatened by mass adoption and you guys really are behaving exactly like an elite, albeit a ragged one…

Sleepless in the blogosphere

Thanks to The Guardian for two consecutive sleepless nights scoring dozens of Great British Weblogs. I’m in awe. Not a turkey among them. I’ve over-dosed on clever, useful, ironic, sometimes geeky and very often inspirational writing, lots of big-hearted link sharing (natch) and some fascinating new thinking on the web, user interfaces and computers. I was worried, to begin with, that the anti-competition might siphon off all the cool entries but there was no danger of that. I think the competition will prove to be a real validation for the new form and, I hope, a springboard for the weblog’s leap into the mainstream. Now, to bed…

Weblogs go mainstream. Some bloggers don’t like it

I’m busy judging entries to The Guardian’s Best British Blog competition. It’s not easy, not least (of course) because these things are weblogs so they’re full of interesting links. As a result, each weblog viewed produces half a dozen unrelated clicks. Early estimates suggest it’ll take me the rest of my life to form an opinion about all of them – I have until the weekend.

Early on in the competition some members of the blogging elite objected. Tom Coates has gone on to set up a kind of anti-competition for the folks who don’t want to enter and want the world to know it. Although I’m pretty sure that all the cool guys are over there with the refuseniks (has it ever been cool to enter competitions?), I think they’re just being snobs.

It’s always difficult to see your clever, groovy, pioneering passion popularised but I’m certain that even the elite would prefer the visibility and influence that competitions like this will provide to obscurity and irrelevance. Meanwhile, if I can figure out how to work this thing, here is Tom’s continually-updated list of refuseniks. Since I can’t enter the official competion, I feel inclined to add bowblog.